Some more thoughts on marriage equality – from a 7-year-old

I had another post scheduled for today, but I had to rearrange after the impromptu conversation I had with my daughter last night.

While playing board games, we had a discussion about hate. She knows I don’t like the word and she rarely uses it, but it slipped out a couple of times over the course of our games. I told her that it’s a very strong and hurtful word. She asked me what a “strong word” means. I explained that our words have power and used a few examples of how certain words have stronger meanings than others – happy vs. ecstatic, yummy vs. delicious, scared vs. horrified, etc.

Then our conversation moved into how hate and fear have been used to deny people rights. We talked about segregation – a topic that has always fascinated her as she thinks about what it would be like if my boyfriend and I couldn’t be together or if she couldn’t play with her own cousin or friends.

The conversation continued to progress toward the issue of marriage equality and we talked about the rights that are given to couples when they marry and how same-sex couples who want to get married are not given those same rights because they can’t get married. Her response was a very adamant, “What?! Well, that’s not fair!”

I explained that some people don’t think two men or two women should be allowed to get married and she looked at me funny. We talked about how the same kind of hate and fear that people used to deny rights based on race are being used now to deny rights based on who a person loves.

She continued with, “One day, if I meet the president, I’m going to tell him that two men or two women should be allowed to get married!”

I explained how the president doesn’t get to make all of those decisions on his own, but how our current president came out and said the other day that he believes same-sex couples should be allowed to get married and how that’s a big deal because no other president has ever done that. She smiled.

I asked her what made a family and she answered, “Love.”

She told me that she understands now why I don’t like the word “hate”. And we hugged and tickled and went back to our game. This whole conversation lasted a whopping 10 minutes.

So, my question is, if my 7-year-old understands all of this, why can’t so many adults?